The engine: valve gear

Abstract

Perhaps it is nothing more than a piece of English folklore, but it is told of the early days of Steam that the first valve gear was invented by a lazy boy whose job in life was to pull the right rope at the right time to admit steam to the valve chest and to pull the other rope to cut it off again when he saw the cross-head begin to reverse its direction. He must have been a very thoughtless child. Automation has put many of us in later generations among the ranks of the unemployed — but this is material for a different sort of book.

‘Come, let me read the oft-read tale again — Of pregnant parts and quick inventive brain.’

Matthew Arnold